The Badge Nobody Read

He waited until Denise disappeared into the elevator, then circled the reception desk, crouched by the trash can, and fished my resume out from under a crumpled coffee cup.

"Sorry," he said, holding it out to me with two hands, as if it might still be worth something. "That was not, I mean, she does that sometimes."

"Keep it," I said. "I have copies."

He did not sit back down right away. His badge read Owen Pratt, HR Temp, and he kept glancing at mine. "Yours came through weird this morning," he said. "Usually I have to make candidate badges myself, print them at the desk. Yours was already sitting in the printer tray when I got in. Pre-loaded, I guess."

"Interesting," I said, and left it there.

Owen wanted to say more. I could see it building behind his eyes, the way people look right before they ask the one question that would solve everything for them if they just asked it. Instead he glanced toward the elevator, checked that it was still climbing, and sat back down.

"Denise wants you in the side room," he said finally, not quite meeting my eyes. "She said the lobby's getting crowded and you're, uh, done for today."

The side room was a narrow space off the lobby with one window, one chair, and a water stain shaped like a comma on the ceiling tile. No one else was in it. I had not asked to be moved there. Nobody had asked me anything at all; Owen had simply walked me to the door, opened it, and closed it behind me with the particular care of someone who feels bad about a thing he is not going to stop.

I sat down and looked at my badge again. BOARD OFFICE, printed clean, sitting in a tray before I had even walked through the door that morning. Someone in this building had known I was coming before Denise decided I was not worth an interview.

I took out my phone, opened a blank note, and started writing down everything that had happened since nine o'clock, in order, with times. If Denise wanted me out of the lobby, she was about to learn that a closed door did not do what she thought it did.